Archive | November, 2009

Best Buy is making this holiday season even brighter and more full of cheer with the news that they will be offering five (5) Android handsets for $99.99 each, no mail-in rebate required. The smartphones eligible for this price are the HTC Hero and Samsung Moment from Sprint, the myTouch 3G and Motorola CLIQ from T-Mobile, and the HTC DROID Eris from Verizon. No availability dates are yet known, but it may be a fair bet that we will see this pricing rolled out by Black Friday (this friday!) if Best Buy and the carriers want to get a jump on the holiday shopping feeding frenzy.

Those wondering where Motorola has gone right (at least up to this point) with the DROID where Palm went wrong with the Pre, might have to examine the difference between the two in how both advertised their iPhone challengers. Where Palm’s ads went for the arty, avant-garde, Motorola went straight for the testosterone with an ad that could have been a trailer for a summer action movie blockbuster.As a result, the YouGov Brand Index shows a big jump for the Schaumberg, Illinois based company in the important Adult Male category. Apple and RIM have seen drops in their respective scores for Adult Males. Obviously, there is much volatility on a day by day basis, but it should be interesting to see how the Verizon-AT&T feud shows up on the scores. The decision to use Luke Wilson in its spots answering Big Red’s “Map” ads was probably based on some scoring quotient showing Mr. Wilson to be the type of Man’s man that a guy would like to hang out with, draining a few brews, discussing the upcoming NFL weekend, hunting deer and talking for hours about the comparable features of a GSM network with a CDMA one. We will know if this was a good decision when the next batch of Brand Index scores comes out, covering the dates of the new AT&T and Apple spots.

For those who want to know the numbers, Apple has dropped from a score of 48.1 earlier this month to a reading of 22. The numbers are based on a survey of 5,000 Men age 18 and over taken each weekday. Motorola has overtaken the Cupertino crew with a reading of 29.3, very near the peak of 32.3 it scored a few days ago. YouGov says that Motorola is the likely beneficiary of the Verizon-AT&T death cage battle. “Motorola has seen its brand loyalty unaffected by AT&T’s lawsuits against Verizon Wireless and ad war bashing,” YouGov said. “But it seems to have taken a toll on Blackberry, which has withered under all the Droid/iPhone marketing and hype.”
source: YouGovBrandIndex via AppleInsider

Prices of some of the most highly anticipated smartphones are plummeting just days before the official start of the holiday shopping season. For example, Walmart has cut the price of the Verizon DROID ERIS to $30 after a $149.99 Instant Discount and a signed two year pact. The Android powered handset was launched by Big Red on November 6th at a price of $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a signed two year contract. So if you want some Android lovin’ at a very reasonable price, or if you plan on giving away some Android action as a holiday gift, when you are shopping for new undies or horse chow, stop by the electronics department and take advantage of Walmart’s largess.
source: Androidforums via Phandroid

Posted on 25 November 2009 by AndroidArena

Built-in GPS modules have become almost mandatory with most cell phones today. The company Nav N go, best known for its navigational software called iGO decided to jump on the bandwagon earlier this year and introduced versions for the iPhone and Windows Mobile. The developer has now announced its plans to release iGO amigo for Android-based handsets that are becoming more and more popular by the day. The cool thing about the software suite is that it can actually work with preloaded maps and doesn´t need active internet connection as Google Maps does. Nav N Go hasn´t mentioned any specific release date, but we hope iGO amigo for Android rolls out soon enough.

Thanksgiving in the U.S. is this Thursday, and once you have recovered from eating too much turkey and pumpkin pie, you can brave the crowds on Black Friday (the biggest shopping day of the year) and save $50 on an Android-powered Motorola CLIQ from T-Mobile. If you are not able to get out this Friday to pick up your new CLIQ, never fear — the $50 discount is also available through Black Friday Weekend (Saturday and Sunday).

With the $50 savings, you will be able to get a Motorola CLIQ under contract for $149.99 or $349.99 without a contract. How many of you will venture out this weekend for a CLIQ?

Google has launched an app on the Android Market that allows those with phones powered by Android OS 1.6 or higher to have the same turn by turn navigation seen on the Motorola DROID and other phones that will be released with Android OS 2.0. Actually, the app will not have some of the advanced voice features seen on the Android 2.0 version, but does come with voice guidance, traffic info, satellite and Street View images and Layers. According to the report in RWW, while the app is supposed to work only in the U.S., some have been able to hack their phone to allow the app to work anywhere in the world.

You don’t have to be nice, and in fact you can be naughty and still qualify for discounts on some handsets offered by T-Mobile this holiday season. The carrier has been offering price cuts on a different set of phones every few days, according to some information received by Tmo News. The next discount starts on Thursday, November 26 and runs through the 29th. During that period, you can take $50 off the Motorola CLIQ and the Samsung Highlight. $25 is taken off the price of the Nokia 3711. The next group of discounts comes December 4 through the 6th and will get you $15 off the Nokia 2720, $10 off the Nokia 5130 and $25 taken off the Samsung Gravity II. As we get closer to the 25th, the discounts continue. From December 18th to December 20, T-Mobile is taking $50 off the Samsung Comeback and $10 is cut from the price of the Samsung t459 Gravity I. For last minute shoppers, December 21-24 will see only one handset getting a price cut and that is the social networking monster, the Motorola CLIQ, which will be getting a $50 haircut for those days. For those who forgot someone on their list, or want to get a head start on the 2010 holiday season, from December 26 to the 28th, a $25 discount will be applied on the BlackBerry Curve 8520. The discounts will be available across all rate plans and for plans requiring a 2 year contract, customers must be fully eligible for an upgrade to get the price cut.

Check out the list of phones and just maybe, a model that you were looking to buy for yourself or as a gift, can be purchased for a little less than what you were expecting to pay. And for that, you can thank all of those elves working behind the scenes at T-Mobile.
source: TmoNews

Gameloft is a big name in mobile app development, so when they have something to say about developing for Android, it may be worth a listen. According to Gameloft, their iPhone apps sales outpaces Android app sales 400 to 1. Consequently, they have chosen to scale back on Android app development. From Gameloft:

We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others. [The Android Market] is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.

Gameloft may have some good points. When compared to the polished experience on iTunes, the Android Market is far less exciting and enticing. Hopefully as more Android handsets hit the market, Android app development and sales will both prosper.

A lot of info has been passed along recently on the Sony Ericsson Xperixa X10. The joint-venture’s first Android device was the subject of a Press Event in Sweden and Phandroid was there to shoot some video to give us the feeling of being there. Also, the site notes that Sony Ericsson has made some changes to the Xperia X10’s web page that shows that the device would have the following bands covered:

GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
UMTS/HSPA 800/850/900/1700/1900/2100

At first blush, this looks favorable for both AT&T and T-Mobile. But the following line says that 900/1700 is not available for phones sold in the Americas. And then there was one. AT&T is the last carrier standing which points to a subsidized price for the Xperia X10, something that fans of the device had been hoping for since the first word came out about a phone named Rachael all those months ago.

Another interesting tidbit is that the X10 will have turn-by-turn navigation courtesy of Wisepilot. Since the handset will not launch with Android 2.0, Google Navigation would be a no-show at the beginning, anyway. But when a 2.0 update is made available, will Xperia X10 owners still have Wisepilot or Google Navigation or will they get to choose which one they want on their device?
source: Phandroid

A mere two weeks after getting launched by Verizon, the carrier’s flagship device, the Motorola DROID, is getting a price cut from Dell. The world’s first Android 2.0 device, the DROID has been the subject of good to great reviews with many saying that with the DROID, Big Red now has a handset that can match-up with the powerful Apple iPhone. Early reports suggested that 100,000 units moved during the first weekend and another 150,000 were sold on subsequent days. Despite all this, Dell is now offering the DROID for $119.99 with a 2 year contract, which is quite a big bargain when compared to Verizon’s current price of $199.99 after a mail-in rebate and with the 2 year contract. The Dell offer also applies to contract extensions which means that you do not need to be eligible for an upgrade to take advantage of the offer. The price also includes free Fed-Ex shipping, so you can’t ask for much more. With Black Friday just around the corner, it will be interesting to see if Verizon takes the price of the device down a notch as a nod to Dell’s action and to spur sales. Whatever the wireless operator decides to do, the action will be scrutinized and analyzed as a way to determine how well the phone is selling.
source: Dell via IntoMobile